Session Title: nStudy: An Internet Tool to Support Learning, Collaboration, and Researching Learning Strategies
Time & Date: 3:05 P.M. – 4:00 P.M., Thursday, June 18, 2009
Location: Rm. 155, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC)
Session Description: We describe and demonstrate nStudy, a rich web-based internet application for personal learning based on an agentic model of self-regulated learning (Beaudoin, 1994; Winne & Nesbit, 2009). nStudy supports learners in carrying out solo and collaborative structured conceptual analysis of online content in a web browser with desktop-like capabilities. Learners can read arbitrary web content and link that content to new or previously created personal learning objects, including: notes, terms, learning strategies, tags, concept maps, chats and rich text documents. nStudy provides a configurable collection of educationally useful tags to help learners describe and evaluate content and to manage their learning objectives. nStudy also allows learners to create and edit web forms (with drag and drop) that they can apply to their notes and strategies. Fields in notes’ forms– text boxes, sliders, checkboxes, radio buttons, dates, etc. – can represent important educational schemas such as criticisms, debates, reviews, analyses, etc. Learning strategies are embedded in nStudy as learning objects that learners can read, apply and link. nStudy also provides tools for collaborating and sharing objects with peers. Other tools in development, slated for delivery by year end, include: concept mapping, goal setting, monitoring learning progress, and self testing. At the same time as nStudy enriches learning activities, it provides researchers with a highly configurable tool for carrying out sophisticated scientific investigations of learning by logging very detailed, structured information about learning patterns; content selection, use and review; and use of learning strategies.
For more information about nStudy, you can read the study by Luc Beaudoin and Phil Winne.
Beaudoin, L. (1994). Goal processing in autonomous agents. PhD thesis, School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham.
Winne, P. H., & Nesbit, J. C. (in press, 2009). Supporting self-regulated learning with cognitive tools. In D. J.
Hacker, J. Dunlosky & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Handbook of metacognition in education. New York: Routledge.
Conference Stream: Extending the CMS
Session Format: Panel Discussion
Co-Presenter: Luc Beaudoin
Co-Presenter Bio: Luc Beaudoin is Research Associate at the Faculty of Education of Simon Fraser University. He leads the Learning Kit Project software development team.
Co-Presenter: Phil Winne
Co-Presenter Bio: Phil Winne is Professor of Education and Canada Research Chair at Simon Fraser University. He researches students’ metacognition and learning strategies.
